


est stultius

by handydandynotebook



Series: axecution [5]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Absurd, Aftermath of Violence, Billy Hargrove Being an Asshole, Complicated Relationships, Conversations, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Injury, Masturbation, Mild Gore, Strained Relationships, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:22:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29706774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handydandynotebook/pseuds/handydandynotebook
Summary: Everything is so much clearer in hindsight. Susan should’ve drugged Neil first. If she would’ve drugged him, there would’ve been no danger of him waking up. She wouldn’t have mistaken Billy for Neil if there hadn’t been danger of him waking up. Even before that, Susan should’ve been home sooner. She should’ve been home so she could’ve prevented the attack altogether, distracted Neil somehow or someway, took it upon herself to discipline Max for whatever the slight was more gently. Better yet, she should’ve been the person Max dreamed about years ago, the person who yelled back and fled to safety with her daughter in tow.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Susan Hargrove, Susan Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield
Series: axecution [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2121561
Comments: 8
Kudos: 7





	est stultius

**Author's Note:**

> part 5. why is there a part 5. why is it still not the part with recreational axe throwing.

Susan watches Max put on the new sling as she adds the old one and the other contents of Max’s hamper to her laundry basket. A tiny peek of pink tongue pokes out of the corner of her lips in concentration. On her bed, arm supported on the pillow in her lap, she guides the strap with her good hand. Once she’s got it over her uninjured shoulder, Max slips the strap through the top ring and secures the velcro. 

“You’ve gotten good at that.” She’d needed Susan’s help the first few days. Now she has it done in no time flat. 

“Not something I ever really wanted to have to be good at,” Max sighs, moving the pillow off her lap. 

“…why didn’t you tell me?” Susan asks softly. 

“Tell you what?” 

“I know it was Neil, Maxine. I knew it was Neil the moment I saw you.” 

Max swallows, stare fixing upon her dresser. 

“You told Billy the truth. Why not me?” Susan tucks her fingertips under the plastic rim of the laundry basket. 

“If you already knew, why does it matter?” Max still won’t look at her. 

“I don’t understand why you felt the need to hide it from me.” 

The way her eyes bore into the oak, the granite fix of her features, Susan thinks the thing would be ablaze by now if her daughter had pyrokinesis. 

“If I told the truth, Neil would’ve gotten mad. He would’ve called me a liar. Maybe he’d hurt me again or worse, maybe you would’ve believed him.” 

Susan flinches, feels a cold needle pierce right into her heart. 

“Well, you believed his other lies,” Max says, finally looking to her. “It’s why you married him, it’s why we’re here.” 

Susan can’t speak nor refute. She bows her head. “I’m sorry.” 

“Yeah. I know.” Max tickles her fingertips along the strap of her sling. 

“But why didn’t you tell me after? After, uh, um…” 

“After you hacked him up?” Max asks simply, arching a brow. 

“Mm.” Susan chews the inside of her cheek. She does not feel a lick of guilt for what she did to her husband. However, she feels immense, crushing guilt that Max had to see it, that Max became involved. 

“I used to dream about it, you know. You standing up to Neil. When I was younger, I used to imagine one day you’d yell back. You’d take me away from him, as far away as possible, and we’d never ever see his face again.” 

“That’s what should’ve happened,” Susan says quietly, shame wriggling like a mass of maggots in the pit of her stomach. “That’s who I should’ve been.” 

“Yeah…but it’s not that simple, either. I get it a little more now that I’m older. Like, you were probably scared if we tried to leave, he’d lash out and hurt us. Just like I was scared he’d lash out if I told the truth.” 

Susan sets her basket on the floor as her chest clamps tight and skitters over to the bed. Max offers a nod and Susan lets herself sit on its edge. Absently starts wringing her hands, wringing them hard. 

“I was,” she admits. “I really was.” 

“I stopped dreaming. I knew you were never going to do anything about Neil. But then you did.” 

Susan swallows, starts pinching at the skin of her wrists. 

“You did it for me, right?” Max blinks. “Because he hurt me.” 

“I had to make sure it didn’t happen again. It never, ever should’ve happened at all.” Susan pinches harder, hard enough to make her eyes prick, tries to keep herself here on Max’s bed having this conversation she does not know how to have. “I had to make it impossible for that to happen again.” 

Max’s legs cross at the ankles, baggy socks drooping. “I think…I think I didn’t tell you because I knew I was why you did it, but I didn’t…I didn’t want to be part of that. Not because I think you did a bad thing. I promise I don’t think what you did to Neil was bad, it was more…how you were…” 

“How I was,” Susan repeats, a buzz beginning in the back of her skull. 

“Yeah. It wasn’t, um. It wasn’t badass, like it is in the scary movies when the final girl gets smart and overcomes the killer.” Max scrubs her good hand through her hair, uncomfortable look on her face. “It’s like you knew what you were doing but had no idea what you were doing at the exact same time. You kind of lost your mind, Mom.” 

Susan swallows, jerks her head in a little shake. She wants to say something but the discomfort in Max’s eyes crawls beneath her skin. Susan’s own discomfort flares hot, the buzzing in her skull incessant. 

“I needed help.” Max frowns, studying Susan with a trace of uncertainty. “Billy really wasn’t doing good and I needed your help, but you just started shouting about cutting Neil’s head off.” 

“What?” Susan chokes out, Max’s words echoing through her mind. She’d certainly felt like she’d had to cut his head off. She recalls feeling it so certainly it rooted in her marrow, but she didn’t realize she verbalized a thing. 

Max’s frown deepens. “Like I said, you lost your mind. It’s like you knew you were killing him but you couldn’t believe he died. Your voice was shaking and you sounded so scared, as if you thought he was gonna pop up like a Loony Tunes character even though his guts were everywhere.” 

Susan covers her mouth, eyes widening as she thinks back to that night. She sincerely doesn’t remember shouting anything at all. She recalls the urgency of it, of course, she had to cut off Neil’s head because it had to be definitive. The brain sent signals to everything else, Neil needed his brain if he was going to retaliate…it made sense while it was happening. In hindsight she knows— of course she knows differently but she doesn’t…she’d been yelling? 

“Then you hit Billy again and it was like you didn’t even understand what you did.” 

“Th-That was a mistake.” Susan digs her fingernails into the flesh of her wrists because the pinching isn’t working, the buzz in her skull intensifying, that antsy itch between her legs again. She does her best to ignore it, needs to focus on now, on Max. “Mostly. I didn’t…you know I didn’t mean to hurt him…” 

“I know, but.” Max exhales a deep breath. “Billy was already on the floor, okay? You raised an axe over your head and brought it down on his skull while he was on the floor and then you totally flipped out, asking me why he was bleeding as if you couldn’t even fathom it.” 

Over her head? She’d raised the axe that high up? 

“It was like I was the mom. You were panicking and I had to tell you what to do even though I barely knew what to do!” Max whips her head. “It freaked me out seeing you like that, completely scared shitless and losing your mind. Neil got what he deserved, I’m glad you killed him and I won’t take that back no matter how bad it sounds…but like, the way you were?” 

Max sucks in a deep breath, stares solemnly at Susan as she exhales. 

“I didn’t bring up what he did because I didn’t want to be the reason you were like that. I didn’t want to be the reason you went crazy.” 

“Oh, honey, no.” Susan releases her fingernails from her wrist, heart lurching in her chest. She goes to hug Max, stops short as she thinks better of it, and gently pats her knee instead. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry Neil hurt you. I’m sorry you had to see the things you saw that night.” 

Max gives her a long look and purses her lips. “You could’ve hugged me. A little bit anyway, long as you didn’t squeeze too tight. It’s kinda sore still, but not like it was.” 

The maggots inside the pit of Susan’s stomach just keep wriggling, wriggling, wriggling. 

“I’m sorry,” she repeats, staring at her daughter’s sling and thinking of— _feeling_ —the blade into Neil’s ribs, the sucking-gizzard-give of flesh, resistance when she met the ugly moist crack of bone— and Max’s clavicle must’ve done that too. Max heard that sound at least twice in less than twenty-four hours. 

“I’m so sorry. That never should’ve happened to you. He never should’ve hurt you and I should’ve been more careful that night, you never should’ve become involved.” 

Everything is so much clearer in hindsight. Susan should’ve drugged Neil first. If she would’ve drugged him, there would’ve been no danger of him waking up. She wouldn’t have mistaken Billy for Neil if there hadn’t been danger of him waking up. Even before that, Susan should’ve been home sooner. She should’ve been home so she could’ve prevented the attack altogether, distracted Neil somehow or someway, took it upon herself to discipline Max for whatever the slight was more gently. Better yet, she should’ve been the person Max dreamed about years ago, the person who yelled back and fled to safety with her daughter in tow. 

“I keep having nightmares about it,” Max admits, low and distant. “They’re never exactly like how it actually happened. They’re usually worse.” 

“Worse?” Susan whispers. 

“Yeah, sometimes the details get jumbled up. The one I had last night, Billy died. I couldn’t push his peritoneum back because Neil cut my arms off with an axe. And for some reason, there was a demo…a monster from Dungeons and Dragons. It grabbed you and it wouldn’t let you move.” Max blinks slowly. “Weird, I guess. It sounds kind of silly when I say it out loud but, um. It was a pretty scary nightmare while I was having it.” 

And Susan wonders if she should compare the way she felt about beheading Neil. That it was weird and in retrospect, macabre as it is, it’s silly that she felt that way. But it wasn’t a silly notion at all when it felt real. When it truly felt like that was what she needed to do to make him be done. Done. 

Of course she can’t say that to Max. It’s bad enough Max wound up witnessing it. Max already thinks she went crazy, Susan shouldn’t say anything that supports the theory, shouldn’t say anything that could possibly alarm her. Max has already been through enough. 

“That doesn’t sound silly at all,” she murmurs, giving Max’s knee another pat. Even granted permission to hug her gently, Susan just can’t bring herself to. “I wish you’d told me sooner.” 

“I didn’t want to freak you out. Or make you feel bad because, um, I really don’t think what you did to Neil was bad, but…” Max’s tongue clicks, brows narrowing a bit as her good hand absently traces the envelope of her sling. “I had Billy’s blood under my fingernails for days.” 

Maggots, maggots, maggots chewing away at her stomach like a rotten steak. 

“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” she repeats. 

“He needed help. I needed help with him.” There’s a spark of stubbornness in Max’s eyes, not quite anger. “You left me by myself with my hand in his guts. I was scared and you left me there, and I’m not mad about it because of how you were, but I still…I don’t know, Mom, it was really shitty. You were going crazy and I didn’t know when you were gonna come back.” 

Susan swallows. She bobs her head. She would’ve done things differently. She would have done so many things differently. But knowing what she knows now and what she would’ve done with that doesn’t really change before or the way in which events unfolded in actuality. 

“You were very brave, Max. You shouldn’t have had to be, but you were.” 

Max’s eyes begin to mist. She inhales sharply as she blinks it away, clearing her throat. “Mom?” 

“Yes?” 

“Could you put my hair up high today? It’s kinda hot.” 

“…sure, sweetheart.” Susan rises to her feet. 

She pads to the bathroom to get the hairbrush. Her only intent is to get the hairbrush but the maggots are still wriggling around inside her, eating away and thriving in her rottenness. That undesirable heat prickles between her thighs, so nervous, so itchy. 

Susan hikes her skirt up, doesn’t dare look in the mirror as she spreads her legs, bending one over the basin of the sink. She braces one hand against the wall and slips the other past her underwear, sawing her teeth into her lower lip. She rocks herself against the ceramic, pad of her thumb grazing over her clit. 

It’s discomforting and awkward. The sink is on a pedestal, unattached to the wall. It bobbles a bit with each thrust of Susan’s hips. Softly thunks back against the wall, annoying— no, awful, godawful, sounds like— like Billy’s knees when they hit the floor. 

Susan vigorously works herself against the sink, rubs down hard on her clit with two fingertips as her slit soaks against the corner of the basin. She shouldn’t be doing this, she only came in here to get a hairbrush, but there’s just that heat, that terrible heat so low and anxiety skittering like many legged centipedes all over her suddenly too sensitive skin. Her thighs clench even harder than her knuckles clenched around the haft. 

Her folds squelch quietly, so moist— moist like rending meat and Susan wants to gag. She carries on anyway. She carries on and it almost hurts, wet and throbbing hotly against hard ceramic. 

Inevitably, the nausea crests inside her in tandem with a wave of release. Susan bites down on her lip so hard she draws blood. She can’t be sure if the sound she’s biting back is a moan or a scream. 

She lowers her leg from the sink, gulps down the taste of copper. Her skirt falls into place as she steps back, hem brushing her skin a few inches below the knee. She’ll have to add her underwear to the laundry basket but she has to do Max’s hair first, of course. Max can’t do it by herself one-handed, Max is waiting. 

Susan grabs the hairbrush and a scrunchie and trots back to Max’s room. 

“S-Sorry for the wait, sweetie, um. The bathroom was a tad messy, I took a minute to tidy up.” 

“That’s okay…but are you okay?” Max tips her head. “Your face is kinda red.” 

“From holding my breath,” Susan says sheepishly. “I overdid it on the disinfectant spray. You forget how strong aerosol can be.” 

Susan steps around her basket and climbs on the bed, situating herself behind Max. Silence fills the room as she brushes the tangles out of her hair. Susan isn’t sure if it’s a good silence or a bad silence, but at the least, it isn’t a dangerous one. Neil is gone. There’s no more danger at all. 

* * *

Susan’s a bit surprised when Billy comes home early afternoon. She isn’t used to seeing him on Sundays. He hadn’t stuck around that long yesterday. He’d helped her make the soup in the wee hours of the morning and when she woke up from her nap after the fact, head pounding like a jackhammer, the Camaro was gone again. 

“Hi,” she greets, offering a little smile. 

Billy just grunts as he stiffly moves past her and Susan snaps her head up when she gets a whiff of him. Mingled with the marijuana and a hint of women’s perfume is a much more concerning scent. Chlorine. 

“Uhh, did you go swimming?” 

Billy hovers around the fridge, gives a small shrug as he curls his fingers around the handle. “I don’t know.” 

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Susan asks, frankly alarmed at the possibility her stepson dove into a pool with open wounds. 

“Jesus.” Billy sighs, heavy and burdened. “I’m an accomplice to your murderous axe rampage and we did drunk cooking together. That means something or other, Sue, I get it, but it definitely doesn’t mean you can crawl up my ass about every single little thing.” 

Susan’s mouth drops. She closes it and knits her fingers together, unsure if she should press further. He hasn’t taken his sunglasses off. Could mean he’s high, if not merely hungover. The way his opposite hand cups over his belly when he pulls the refrigerator door tells her he’s hurting. A Billy in pain is an especially testy Billy, so maybe that does mean she should back off. 

“I wish, um…I wish you wouldn’t call it a rampage,” she pleads softly. That word sounds violent. A rampage could describe one of Neil’s moods, the ones that ended in jagged shards, backs against bookshelves, Max’s eyes like frightened moons, or forceful sex that left Susan sick and empty enough to dream about slitting right through the bruises blooming on her wrists. What she did wasn’t anything like a rampage. 

“So there’s a deal to be made here. You quit crawling up my ass, and I’ll quit calling it that.” Billy grabs a Gatorade and Susan notices a hickey on his neck before he shuts the fridge. 

Testy indeed. Susan doesn’t reply, decides its without a doubt better to keep her distance. Billy heads off to his room. Doesn’t slam the door as hard as Susan expects him to. Moments later angry music booms through the walls. 

Susan polishes off her small snack plate of grapes and pretzels. She peeks in on Max who still seems content enough, reading comics on her bed even as the thinner items on her shelf vibrate against the wall her room shares with Billy’s. By now Max is probably used to it, used to concentrating in spite of all sorts of noise and chaos. The thought pangs Susan’s heart.

Max blinks her way. “What’s up, Mom?” 

“Just checking in. You hungry?” 

“Nah, still full from breakfast.” 

Susan should say so. The kid put away two fried egg sandwiches, four smoked links, and a side of hashbrowns. It was a relief, really. It was the most Susan’s seen her eat since (blood smearing on the handle of the safe, vividly red against chrome metal) the night everything came to a head.

“Is Billy crabby again?” Max nonchalantly jerks her thumb toward his room. 

“Mm…mhm. My fault, I suppose…I’m not giving him enough space.” 

“Might just be hungover. Billy always parties hard on Saturday.” Max clucks her tongue and turns the colorful page. 

“Well, let me know if you get hungry or if you need help with anything.” 

“Okay.” Max spares a rueful glance to her sling before her attention’s back on the comic book. 

Susan returns to her own bedroom and continues dumping Neil’s clothes into trash bags. She discards every polo she’d ever bought him, doesn’t have a care to spare for every wasted penny. She rids the closet of every belt that ever struck Billy’s skin. Every pair of jeans unzipped before she found herself plowed into until she was tearing from the inside out, teeth in her knuckle while she prayed to be imaginative enough to pretend she was somewhere, anywhere else but the moment. 

She will not donate these. She will not donate anything of Neil’s. Susan left religion long ago but superstition, perhaps, still has something of a hold on her. His clothes feel cursed. They belong nowhere but the curb. 

* * *

Susan’s still throwing Neil’s things away late into the evening. It’s around nine as she empties the bookshelf of all his favorites, stacking them into cardboard boxes. It’s halfway full when Susan hears a creak, glancing over her shoulder as Billy pads into the living room. 

“Hey…” 

Susan turns to face him, smiles uncertainly. She hasn’t seen him since the afternoon. She didn’t bother him for dinner, wasn’t particularly inclined to think he wanted her to. 

“Susan, can you, uh…” he pauses, strange look on his face as he wrestles with whatever it is he’s trying to ask her. 

Susan is unsettlingly reminded of the few conversations she’d had with him in the hospital. Conversations that had her writhing with unshakeable guilt when he was concussed and at some points, just couldn’t get out what he’d wanted to say. And she could tell he knew, that the thoughts were right there on the tip of his tongue, but he just couldn’t collect them enough to speak them. That had perturbed her in more ways she cared to think about and she finds herself rather relieved Billy doesn’t seem to remember any of it. It would almost be like it never happened at all, were she not reminded of it now. 

“…you think you could give me a ride?” 

“Oh.” Susan presses her lips together. “Trouble with the Camaro?” 

“Not exactly. I guess I’m kinda low on gas, forgot to stop on my way back…” Billy thumbs at the belt loops in his jeans, gazing down at the floor. 

“Um, okay. So, uh, where exactly do you want to go this late on a Sunday?” 

He doesn’t answer, doesn’t say anything. He looks somewhere between concerned and irritated and Susan’s starting to find herself a tad anxious. “Billy, are you okay?” 

“Yeah. I’m fine, just, um.” His tongue runs over his lower lip as he glances to the clock on the wall, breathes out. “Shit, I didn’t realize how late it was. They’re closed anyway.” 

He turns around, starts shuffling toward the hall. 

“Wait, who’s closed?” Susan frowns. “Do you need something?” 

“Kinda wanted to hit up the drug store,” Billy mumbles, back still to her. “I’m outta gauze.” 

“Already?” Susan just bought more supplies Thursday. 

“Don’t flip your lid ‘cause it’s not a big deal, but um…I’ve had to change stuff out like three times since I’ve been home. Thinking I messed up somewhere last night, ‘cause it was bloody every time.” 

Susan draws a gasp. 

“I said don’t flip out.” Billy turns to glower, exasperated. 

“Are you b-bleeding now?” He’s wearing a black shirt with some band logo she only kind of recognizes, hand’s still protective over the area. 

“Barely. It’s not gushing out, okay, it’s not bad…but there hasn’t been any blood in about a week, so I don’t think it’s good, either,” he admits with the slightest catch in his voice.

Susan swallows, nodding slowly. “Okay. Maybe we should pay a visit to Urgent Care, hm? They’re open until ten.” 

There isn’t really a question about it. If Billy came to her, it’s bad enough to warrant a look. Billy doesn’t ask for help lightly. In fact, Susan doesn’t believe he’s ever asked for her help at all. Just as indicative, he doesn’t immediately balk at the suggestion. 

“Might not be a bad idea,” he sighs out, nearly sullen with defeat. 

Susan steps around the box of Neil’s books. She gets her keys and ventures down the hall to see if the light is on under Max’s door. If it were, she’d see if she wanted to come along, but it’s not, so she writes a note instead. 

Billy is very quiet in the car, stone faced, arm around his stomach. Susan feels the sensation of his blood splatter on her arms, the first to be felt that night, and the guilt coats her throat like glue. 

“Have any idea how you could’ve overdid it?” she asks warily. Billy’s a brawler but his knuckles are clean, so she wants to hope it wasn’t a fight. 

“Pretty sure I had sex.” 

Susan rolls her eyes. He’s just trying to get a rise out of her. Billy seems to enjoy making her uncomfortable by being indecent. But after a heartbeat she realizes that isn’t what’s happening now. He’s simply being direct, looking disinterested and tuckered out as he slumps, head against the window. 

Pretty sure? Well, Susan’s absolutely sure that’s something he should know. Not for the first time, she wonders if she needs to worry about Billy hitting the substances harder since Neil is gone. About the possibility of him doubling down on his bad habits because he knows he can, of course he does, it’s not like Susan could stop him. 

She never approved of the way Neil handled Billy. Even before she realized just how violent he got with him, she never outright endorsed it. But Billy is a lot and she’s mildly unnerved with the knowledge sitting in her that she just can’t do anything about it. His restraints are gone and she can’t stop him from skipping school, or stealing wallets, or putting god knows what up his nose. 

And sure, he did those things while Neil was still around. But Neil was something of a deterrent. Susan can’t hold Billy back at all. 

She hits a bump in the road and watches him grimace. 

“Sorry.” 

He grunts in response, brows drawn. 

“Oh, fella, that’s pretty tender, huh?” 

“Nah, m’good.” 

She can’t stop him from lying either. Then again, maybe she’s worrying about things that will resolve themselves with time. The loss is still fresh. Freedom from Neil is a new reality for all of them. Maybe Billy just needs to go wild for a little bit before he settles down. Maybe he’ll back off his bad habits once they’re all adjusted to this freedom. Neil isn’t around to stress him out anymore, so hopefully that’s how it is. 

Neil was something of a deterrent for the bad habits. But he was even more so the cause. 

* * *

The crowd at the clinic is pretty sparse this time of night. There are only a couple people ahead of them. It occurs to Susan this is the second time she’s sat in a waiting room with Billy. 

The first time was about three weeks after Neil broke his arm. She had to take him for followup x-rays to make sure the bones were healing well. The same kind of appointment Max is scheduled for next week for her clavicle fracture. He was all bared teeth and snarls the whole time. Susan had been halfway convinced he’d smack her with the cast, crack her jaw. Now he’s just quiet, crinkling his nose at paperwork, waxy under the bright florescent lighting. 

She wonders if there’s some irony in that. That Billy was head to toe of fury and snarling at her when she’d taken him in for something Neil did but now that he needs treatment for something she did, he’s not even particularly prickly. But of course, what Neil did was very much on purpose and what Susan did was very much not, absolutely anything but. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers anyway, guiltily fidgeting in her chair. 

Billy snorts, taps the pen against the clipboard. “Whatever. What’s a PCP?” 

“That’s a who, not a what. It’s printed on your card.” 

“I don’t see— oh. Okay.” 

It’s not that long before they take him back and Susan lets her eyes glaze over outdated magazines. She flips through one and discovers a recipe for cranberry-orange scones. She hasn’t made scones in years. Neil never cared for them. He always found them too dry. 

It suddenly occurs to Susan that Billy isn’t the only one who gets to do whatever he wants. Susan, too, can do whatever she wants. She can make these cranberry-orange scones. She could dig out her old recipe for blueberry-lemon ones. She could make any and every kind of scone. She could bake sheet after sheet of scones and then toss them all over the floor just to make a mess and Neil isn’t there to scream at her to clean it up, mock her for her uselessness dare she miss a measly crumb. 

Susan could do whatever she wants, but what does she want? 

Is it enough just to breathe easier? 

Susan doesn’t find the answers to these things in any of the outdated magazines. But she tears out the recipe and crams it in her purse. It’s something for tonight, at least. 

When Billy returns, his complexion looks better. He’s got a slip of paper in hand and Susan isn’t sure what she should or shouldn’t ask. He wasn’t particularly enthused about her crawling up his ass, so to speak, but she takes a chance and probes a little anyway. 

“What’s the verdict?” 

“Probably fucked too hard,” he declares without an ounce of decorum. “No more humping till the holes close, gotta stick to hand and mouth stuff.” 

Susan feels her cheeks incinerate and ducks her head, utterly mortified. It’s beyond appalling and inappropriate for him to speak that way at all. Especially to her, especially in the middle of a public waiting room. 

“Why?” she humbly pleads as she gathers her purse, getting to her feet. 

“The face you make when you hear anything less than PG is priceless.” Billy flashes an infernal smirk, looking pretty proud of himself. Susan’s aghast and yet…well, she prefers him like this than waxen and visibly pained. At least he’s lively, lively is better than (soundless and still when he should be screaming something unholy, Max’s hand buried beneath bleeding flesh) how listless he was in the car on the ride here. 

Susan swallows her misgivings and just shakes her head. “Alright, casanova, let’s go.” 

Billy follows her to the car. Susan eyes the slip of paper as he crams it into his pocket. Isn’t sure if she should ask what it is, isn’t if she’s up for the added worries if it’s a script for painkillers. She’s inclined to think it could be and fair enough, the kid’s hurting, but she can’t help being wary at the prospect of Billy and opioids. 

“You get rid of Neil’s golf clubs yet?” he asks after a few minutes of riding in silence. 

“No. Do you want them?” 

“Pfft. I look like I play golf to you?” 

Neil beat him with one of those clubs once. Susan remembers it, remembers feeling blessed Max was at the skatepark while she reorganized the closet until there was a thud of finality and all the other noises stopped. Remembers biting her lip and waiting to cry until after Neil went to sleep. 

Neil shook a club at Susan because she’d been late to a dinner party he’d wanted to show her off at. Neil didn’t strike her, but he broke the mirror right next to her in the hallway and bellowed obscenities until Susan cleaned up every shard. She recalls her silvery reflection, how numb it looked even as her blood ran cold with fear. How it didn’t seem to reflect her in that moment at all, only a mannequin with her face painted on. 

“I was just wondering, I guess…” 

“I did throw out his medals,” Susan informs him, quickly licking her teeth. 

“You threw them out, like, in the garbage?” Billy sounds surprised. 

“Yes.” 

“Man, those were his pride and joy.” Billy blows out a low whistle. 

“I know.” It’s why she hated them the most. “I hope you’re not upset.” 

“Hell no. Fuck Neil, fuck his medals.” Billy fiddles with the latch of the glove compartment without actually opening it, an action which makes Susan more than a little uneasy. She’d put one of the pistols in there. “I don’t want any of his shit.” 

“But if you do, it’s okay, Billy. If you change your mind, it’s okay.” Susan exhales slowly, partially in relief as Billy quits playing with the latch, leaning back in the seat. 

“I’m not gonna change my mind, seriously, Neil’s shit belongs in the garbage. Fuck, Neil belonged in the garbage…he was trash but he was what I had, y’know?” 

“I know.” 

* * *

Max is in the living room when they get home, wearing green pajamas, paddleball in hand. 

“I got up to get some water and saw the note. You okay, Billy?” 

Susan mentally braces herself for more crudeness. It doesn’t come. Billy shrugs one shoulder, sidles up to Max and ruffles her hair until she makes a face. 

“Never been better. Just wanted to score some Vikes.” 

Disgruntled, Max swats at his arm with the paddleball until he pulls away. “Sorry I asked.” 

Billy huffs a sound of amusement and heads off to his room. For a moment Susan just stands there, ponders if she’s been put on. He was just trying to reassure Max, right? 

Did Susan just get snookered? No, no…he seemed genuinely uncomfortable. He was in pain in the car. Unless…No. Billy isn’t Neil. She’s possibly being paranoid, running on little sleep and nightmares quite frankly as disturbing as her daughter’s. 

“Max?” 

“Yeah?” 

“I know you’re a little b-big for this, but maybe I could sleep with you in your bed tonight?” Susan asks with a bit of hesitation, nervously nibbling her lip. “Maybe it would help with the nightmares?” 

“Oh.” Max frowns, scratching at her neck. “Sorry, Mom. It’s not a big bed and it’s hard enough for me to get comfortable by myself with the stupid sling…” 

“I understand.” Susan tries not to look as crestfallen as she feels, waving her hands in a passive gesture. 

Max peers at her for a long moment, thoughtful look crossing her face before the corner of her mouth quirks up. 

“But I wouldn’t say no to camping here in the living room. Is that a good compromise?” 

Susan beams and eagerly bobs her head, awash in a bay of relief. 

**Author's Note:**

> idek what this is anymore, it's not even abt anything. i'm just tryna prioritize and my brain's like nah, u live in axe murder snafu au now.


End file.
